After winning his first U.S. Open and completing the career Slam, Rafael Nadal took the requisite victory lap of New York on Tuesday, stopping for photo opps, television appearances and awkward introductions to B-list celebrities. Busted Racquet was there* to chronicle it all:
To begin the morning, Rafa stood in the middle of Times Square to hoist his U.S. Open trophy. He was holding it much lower than on Monday, clearly a sign of fatigue:
For some reason, he then turned 90 degrees to stand in front of the NASDAQ tower. I'm not going to even pretend to know who the guy next to him is, but I guess the Naked Cowboy was busy:
Rafa then stopped by Regis and Kelly. Ms. Ripa looks smitten with Nadal. Regis, even more so:
How nice to see Rafa interviewed without being rudely interrupted for pregame football coverage. He also went interruption-free during an early morning stop at the "Today" show. (Man, Matt Lauer sure looks different than I remember.)
While he was there, he met actress Blake Lively, who appears to be trying to steal his $550,000 watch:
In the past week, the "Gossip Girl" actress has met both Nadal and Roger Federer. And both times she posed for pictures like she was planning her getaway:
After that, Rafa sat for an interview at CNN. They bonded over low television ratings:
Then it was on to a public Q&A session with John McEnroe and recent recepients of complimentary T-shirts:
And, finally, it was back to Spain, where after signing some autographs, Nadal could finally rest, relax and safely dodge phone calls from Regis:
* In the metaphorical sense